...trudging into the distance in the bleeding stinking mad shadow of Jesus...the Lord out of dust had created him, had made him blood and nerve and mind, had made him to bleed and weep and think, and set him in a world of loss and fire... --Flannery O'Connor

My old friend Lucifer came / Fought to keep me in chains / But I saw through the tricks / Of six-sixty-six --Johnny Cash

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Musings on Openness Theology, Part 6: S-Fact Blindness and the Incarnation

Similar to what I did in the last post, I'm going to make an argument for openness theology without recourse to free will.

Actually, the position I'm going to argue for is not, technically, an openness theology formulation. It is, rather, a position that captures much of what is being sought for, theologically speaking, from openness theology.

This argument is going to be based on what is known as the Hard Problem of Consciousness.

Part 1: p-Facts and s-FactsThe Hard Problem of Consciousness, a term coined by David Chalmers, refers to one of the most notorious issues in neuroscience, cognitive psychology, and the philosophy of mind. Specifically, the problem points out the explanatory disjoint between the methods of reductive science and the subjective experience of mental states.

Science, as a method of inquiry, relies on public, third-party adjudication. That is, Fact X or Outcome of Experiment Z should be repeatable and replicable under controlled and identical conditions. When we see Fact X or Outcome of Experiment Z repeated and replicated over and over the scientific community reaches a public consensus about the phenomenon under consideration. Let's call these p-facts (p for "public-facts").

Science only traffics in p-facts. Anything that can't fit into the box of p-facts (e.g., ghosts, God, historical events) cannot be scientifically evaluated. Science is just a one trick pony: Grinding out and adjudicating between purported p-facts.

Now it should come as no surprise that science would like to investigate the workings of the human mind. And to a large degree many of the p-facts of human brain functioning and cognition have been revealed. For instance, we know that Broca's area in the left hemisphere of the brain is involved in speech production. Damage in that area leads to aphasia. This correlation--brain location and function--is a p-fact. Neuroscientists have public access to the evidence supporting this p-fact.

But there are certain aspects of the brain that we would like to study which don't appear to be p-facts. I'm referring specifically to what psychologists calls "sensation" (other names are "qualia," "experience," or "phenomenological experience"). Sensations are our raw sensory experiences: Visual, auditory, olfactory, etc. Take the classic example from the literature: Red. "Red" is a sensory experience. We experience it when we see an apple or a rose. But what does red look like? What accounts for its particular "color"? How exactly is red different from blue?

The "sensation of red" is clearly a fact about the word. And it's a repeatable phenomenon, unlike a historical event, that should be amenable to scientific research. It should be a p-fact. But, notoriously, it's not a p-fact. It's an s-fact (s for "subjective-fact" or "sensation-fact").

All sensations are s-facts. That is, they are private. They are not public like p-facts. I can't get into your head to "see" what red looks like to you. Note, however, that there are a host of p-facts about color sensation. For example:

Some p-Facts about Color Perception:

(i) The neurological events in the eye can be correlated with certain wavelengths of radiation (i.e., we know about rods and cones--the photo-receptor cells--in the eye)

(ii) The correlation between brain events in the occipital lobe and exposure to certain wavelengths of radiation (i.e., when you look at color slides we can observe and correlate those exposures with events in the brain seen via brain imaging devices).

(iii) The correlation between verbal tags and exposure to certain wavelengths of radiation (e.g., You always say "red" when you are exposed to a certain wavelength of radiation).

All these are p-facts. These are events and experiments that are amenable to science. But notice, none of these p-facts can tell us just why red looks different from blue. That distinction is an s-fact.

The perversity of the situation is this: Since science only traffics in p-facts we will never, ever, gain a scientific account of sensation. This is perverse because it seems that sensation, being a regular feature of the mind, SHOULD be amenable to science. Yet it is hard (hence the name "Hard Problem of Consciousness") to imagine a way that science could explain s-facts. There is a disjoint between the public nature of scientific adjudication and the private nature of sensation. The tool--science--and the material--sensation--just don't match up.

Chalmers puts it this way. Even if science could perfectly explain all the p-facts of the human mind there would still be something LEFT OVER, something EXTRA, that is involved in human cognition: All those s-facts. Science might, one day, know with perfect precision the exact neural correlates of all s-facts. That is, from a third-party perspective I might track with perfect knowledge the molecule by molecule changes in your brain when you see a rose. But observing those molecular changes still does not reveal to me what red looks like to YOU. The s-fact of red cannot be cracked open with better and more powerful brain scans. Staring at a bunch of neurotransmitters isn't going to tell you why red looks different from blue.

Part 2: The Omniscient Neuroscientist Who Sees Only Black and WhiteNow what does all this have to do with openness theology? Well, I'm going to borrow a common thought experiment from the Hard Problem literature and adapt for a theological purpose.

Here is a two-part thought experiment:

Part A: Imagine a neuroscientist with perfect knowledge of the human brain. That is, this scientist has perfect brain imaging capability and had performed all the requisite experiments. Further, this scientist knows all the Laws of the Mind: For each and every stimuli the mind faces this scientist can predict with perfect accuracy the activity of the brain.

Part B: Now imagine that this scientist, from birth, has been wearing goggles that renders the world in black and white.

Okay, first verify for yourself that Part A and Part B involve no contradiction. That is, you don't have to know what red looks like, subjectively speaking, to have perfect scientific knowledge of color vision. The scientist can verify which "color" a subject is seeing by noting the p-facts. For example, "red" is simply the wavelength of radiation the person is being exposed to, something that can be assessed with a measuring instrument (i.e., "red" is defined as a public event--a reading on a scientific instrument--and not as a private, subjective experience).

This is the point of the thought experiment: You can have perfect, objective, scientific, p-fact knowledge of color vision and still not know what red looks like. (btw, this thought experiment is just another way of framing/illustrating the Hard Problem.)

Now imagine that we ask the neuroscientist to take off, for the first time in her life, the black and white googles. (For the sake of argument, let's put aside the neurological/developmental issues of depriving someone of color vision from birth.) Could the neuroscientist, who has PERFECT scientific knowledge of color vision, even predict what a world of color looks like? It would be like going from Kansas to Oz.

Now we can ask this question: By taking off the goggles did the neuroscientist LEARN something? Sure they did! They learned what red looks like! And they learned this in the only way possible: By stepping into the experience. The only way to "learn" an s-fact is to EXPERIENCE it.

Part 3: God and s-FactsCan you see where I am going with this? The perfect neuroscientist is an omniscient scientist. Well, more precisely, an omniscient p-fact scientist. (Because the scientist, prior to the removal of the goggles, doesn't know the s-facts.) So here is my question: Is God in any way analogous to the omniscient p-fact scientist?

That is, by creating humans did God--in possession of all p-facts--create the possibility for ANOTHER set of facts--s-facts--that God did not have access to? What I'm suggesting, in contrast to free will arguments, is that the universe, humans in particular, is more inexplicable to God than unpredictable. The reason for this is that God created a set of facts--s-facts--that he did not have access to. God retains all objective, p-fact knowledge, but God is (initially at least) shut out of the "human experience." God does not know, first-hand, what it "feels like" to be a human being. And if God were shut out from s-facts then there would be a critical relational disjoint between God and humanity which might explain much of the biblical witness.

If this analysis is correct it produces fruit similar to (and in some cases better than) openness theology positions.

For example, the debate between classic theism and openness theology often pits God's omniscience against the biblical witness that God experiences emotions and changes his mind. For example, if God knows the future how can God be emotional in the face of human actions? God should be impassive, right? But the Bible clearly grants God emotions. Does God, then, not know the future? If he doesn't, then how can he be omniscient?

In short, the debate between openness theology and classic theism pits two biblical claims--God has emotions and is omniscient--against each other. And it is hard to reconcile the two.

But let's look at the issue from the s-fact perspective. First, God is p-fact omniscient. As such, he can probably predict the future perfectly. The trouble is, due to God's s-fact blindness, the future unfolds in a way that puzzles God. Without s-fact knowledge God can predict the next moves of creation but something critical is missing. That is, God might know--as a p-fact--that A will follow B in the chain of events. But what is left out is the critical feature of "Why?", from an s-fact perspective. For example, A follows B because B hurts!

Think back to the neuroscientist, but now imagine we could block out ALL s-facts, not just those about color vision. Although the neuroscientist could explain all the relevant p-facts of, let's say, pain sensation, can she really understand why we pull our hand away from a hot stove? Isn't something, from an explanatory perspective, being missed? I think so.

Now I don't think God is completely s-fact blind. But I do think God has SOME s-fact blindness. For example, can God know what it is like to be scared? To experience pain? Nostalgia? Pride? Temptation? Embarrassment? Shame? Guilt? Old age? Giving birth?

In short, I think in certain critical areas God starts off as s-fact blind and this blindness can explain much of the Old Testament witness regarding God's emotions and responsiveness to humanity.

Specifically, due to s-fact blindness God initially finds us alien and Other. Thus, the emotions of God in the bible and his changing plans are less about his being "surprised" than about a God's wrestling with something foreign and strange. God seems to be trying to "figure us out." And as the process unfolds God reacts with surprise, delight, anger and frustration.

In my opinion, this sense of "foreignness" better expresses, when compared to free will formulations, the relational dynamic between God and humanity. In openness theology relationality is believed to be preserved by the existence of free will. But God's s-fact blindness, in my view, is a better model. For example, when I first met my wife (or my children or a new friend) the issue, relationally speaking, is not if the two of us have "free will." The issue is, rather, "Who is this person?" Relationality is a process of intimacy and intimacy is a process of discovery. More specifically, it is a process of discovering the internal life of the beloved. We call this "understanding." To understand my wife is to take her perspective, to "get inside", as best I can, her unique take on the world. What starts out as foreign, a literal stranger, eventually becomes my beloved. In short, according to my s-fact model relationality with God doesn't emerge because we are free (although we may be), but because God and I start out as strangers. God is trying to know me and I'm trying to know God. And this is accomplished in a way analogous to human intimacy: Taking two distinct experiences and bringing them together. To be intimate is to learn, as best I can, your s-facts.

Part 4: Is God Growing More Kind?Another interesting application of s-fact blindness is that it might explain some of the perceived disjoint between the Old and New Testaments.

Specifically, Christians claim that God is love. Yet, God's expressions of love seems radically different in the Old versus the New Testament. Crudely stated, God seems more kind in the New Testament. Why is this?

Many answers have been proposed to this question. S-fact blindness might be another. That is, God has always been loving. But God's ability to love humanity, early on, has been affected by s-fact blindness. God, literally, could have made some mistakes early on. Not because God is evil or incompetent, but simply due to the early missteps that occur in any new relationship where two people find each other as unpredictable strangers. Relationships are messy due to s-fact blindness. Perhaps the same goes for God and humanity.

Part 5: What Does the Bible Say?This all seems so abstract and philosophical. Does this perspective have any biblical support?

Hebrews 2But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels, now crowned with glory and honor because he suffered death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone. In bringing many sons to glory, it was fitting that God, for whom and through whom everything exists, should make the author of their salvation perfect through suffering. Both the one who makes men holy and those who are made holy are of the same family. So Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers...Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil— and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death. For surely it is not angels he helps, but Abraham's descendants. For this reason he had to be made like his brothers in every way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people. Because he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.

Hebrews 4Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has gone through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet was without sin. Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.

Did God learn something in the incarnation? If so, what did God learn? According to my model, God learned about the s-facts of the human experience.

Is this not what the book of Hebrews is speaking to? That Jesus is a more perfect High Priest because Jesus has experienced the s-facts? Hebrews seems to suggest that God learned something in the Incarnation that was vital to his ability to be a good God to us. And what God seemed to learn is what it "feels like" to be a human.

Because of the Incarnation God is less s-fact blind. And, via the intercession of Jesus and the Holy Spirit, the human experience is able to be "translated." God now "understands" us.

19 thoughts on “Musings on Openness Theology, Part 6: S-Fact Blindness and the Incarnation”

You are tracking some of Jack Miles' thinking. As for what God learned, Hebrews 5 says that Jesus "learned obedience through what he suffered." My presumption is that God set up God's own suffering in creation and in ongoing relationship with that creation. Familial agonies and dysfunctional relationships, even in the best of families and communities, both model and reflect the human condition and tell us about ways in which we learn. Still, like the grain of grit in the oyster, we are on our way to becoming pearls.

Hi George,Yes, I don't think the core of the idea here is new. I think many theologians have argued that the Incarnation was significant for the life of God and human/divine relations. Any "novelty" here is just looking at those passages in Hebrews through a quirky set of issues (the Hard Problem of Consciousness).

Thinking back to your comment about the time of year, it is funny how I use the blog as a form of stress relief. Although this might seem odd to some, posts like these last two are a lot of fun to write. I'm a pretty cheerful thinker. I don't have a lot at stake in much of this so I can muse without getting tied up into knots about it.

For example, the free will and determinism stuff. You're right, there is no way that nut is going to get cracked. It's like kicking around a rock. To some, a lot is riding on the outcome of that debate. But not for me. I'm just a kid who likes kicking around rocks. Cheers!Richard

Not taking oneself seriously (kicking around rocks) is the serious thing to do when thinking. If you get my drift, most of the time when we humans get into trouble it's when our false modesty competes with our false pride.

Some fascinating rocks you find to kick around! I'm more of a skipper, always looking for just the right shape to interact with a boundary challenge. Maybe that's why I keep coming back to your blog: all those interesting rocks that keep falling out of your mind. (Or do you just stumble onto them?) :-)

The big picture that you just traced really looks promising. It sure seems that the possibility of a real relationship with God depends on respecting the integrity of the other's "p-self" and allowing the relationship to unfold as trust and understanding grow. And it looks like you could argue backwards to you philosophy from your biblical quotes, making the "fit" pretty compelling. I'm delighted to see that kind of promise!

I do have a challenge for the model, though. You say, "To be intimate...is to learn your s-facts." Well, no matter how much I experience of another person's presence and no matter how much I interact with that other person, I will never get to the second-person s-facts. God, in the Christian narrative, crosses a boundary, thereby gaining first-person s-facts about what it is like to be human.

What are the facts to be gained, what is the boundary to be crossed, as I get to know another human being? They can't be the s-facts (directly). They aren't a crossing of the divine-human boundary.

I think the answer will have to be something like what existentialism sets up as the unique human circumstance: our existence does precede our essence, making our means of interacting with the world and other human beings unique--and most people will read "unique means of interacting with the world" as longhand for "will," even if human wills are entirely shaped by nature and nurture. Yes, I still think that the question of the will--forget the "free" side of the question, if it's a distraction--is central.

To convince me otherwise, you will have to produce something unique to each person that makes them worth getting to know, not as one of the varied instances of Homo sapiens (one can get to know varieties of rocks in that way), but as a unique personality that makes itself known through p-facts.

I have enjoyed your last two posts immensely. I think they are extremely helpful to the discussion of open theism, determinism, etc. While I am reflecting on these two posts, and I am continuing to wrestle with your thoughts about free will. So, can you answer a question for me? (And I am not "testing" you. I really am curious.) Since we are "determined" by our past (i.e., we cannot choose to do something completely out of line with our histories), thus the notion of human free will is problematic, I wonder: Does God have free will?(My guess is, by the way you talk of God as one who is continually creating and by the way you describe free will, that you would answer "no.")

You've given me a new angle from which to approach some questions I had regarding divine violence in the Bible. Thanks very much.

I've wanted to ask this for some time: A chemist friend of mine told me about a phenomenon called "microcognition", in which non-CNS nerves play a role in conscious thought. Have you heard anything about this?

Richard,I love your thinking, and I can say one thing for sure, your ideas preach. I have been taking our Bible Studies through Exodus and really listening to God's anger issues, Moses role as intercessor, and of course the Levitical slicing and dicing after the rebellion. I needed this angle and you could have heard a pin drop when they connected with a God who has felt our pain. This is a long way from my reformed roots, and it resonates.

Regarding our accessibility to s-facts of another person, we cannot cross the gulf between us but it is a good thing too.

"the other person is a shore we will never reach, another side for which we set sail in our little crafts but one on which we never actually arrive" John Caputo's quote of E. Levinas on page 44 of "Who Would Jesus Deconstruct".

John also says on the next page:

"The relation with the other person is therefore a journey we never complete, where that incompleteness is not an imperfection but testimony to the perfect excess of the other; it is not a loss but a source of endless novelty and discovery. Were the opposite true, our relation to the other would be ruined (an important philosophical point that is spoofed in the Mel Gibson film 'What Women Want.'"

But I wonder if language itself, especially "poetic" language is oen way to communicate s-facts. Certain experiences seem to do the same: e.g. the example of my wife saying the same words I am about to say. ("The two shall become one. . . .') Or my grandchildren sharing an item without a word between them. Or the "universal" human reaction to hitting one's thumb with a hammer or to the smell of a skunk or to the death of one's child or the resurrection of one's savior. And while it is possible to be a stranger to oneself, s-facts communicated seem to me to be at the heart of community and not merely useful emotional analogues to aid the isolated individual on his pilgrimmage.

Tracy,I think I see what you are getting at. We don't step into each others experiences directly. I can't literally see the world through you eyes. The best I can do is three things:

1. Try, if possible, to move through experiences as similar to your own. (2. If #1 is impossible, then communicate with you and try to draw analogies with my own experiences.3. In the end, treat you as a gift. A unique perspective that is a singularity in human existence.

I think God, in Jesus, did a lot of #1 but not all (e.g., Jesus wasn't a women). Which means that a lot of the current God/Human interaction is going to be #2: Intensive conversation trying to improve intimacy. That is, the Incarnation didn't end the story. It started it. God, via analogies with Jesus' human experience, could BEGIN to understand us. But given our uniqueness, God's work is never done. Each person is a stranger when born. To God as well. What the Incarnation does is give God leverage in beginning the process of intimacy. God has a reference point.

Derran,Feel free to question. To start, let me say that my official position isn't that I don't believe in free will. More properly, I have not been convinced by the various models of free will that have been proposed. That is, I haven't seen a model of human freedom that isn't very problematic or leaves more loose ends than it was given. So, my arguments are less about free will and more about the philosophical MODELS of free will.

Okay, now your question: Does God have free will?

To be honest, I don't know how to answer that question. Here's a different set of question. Does God have a character? Most claim He does. For example, God is love. Will God's choices (products of his will?) be consistent with his character? I assume so. So, does God's character "constrain" him? His God "free" to be not-love, to be evil? If not, if this is an impossibility, then God's will is like what I've described in the last post/comments: Will isn't a "choice" as much as it is an expression of character. Perhaps, then, freedom is the product of sin (evil becomes an option). It disorders the universe. Salvation is, famously, to will one thing. To have a perfect will. Where my character "determines" my choice and evil is not longer, with God, an option.

Don,What I find most appealing in openness theology is its relational focus. Putting aside the details of my arguments in the last two posts, the picture I most resonate with is:1. The Creation is unfolding for God. God didn't create, step back, and watch it. Creation is more like a blooming flower than a watch God wound up.2. God finds us--for whatever reason--relational beings. God has to "work" to understand us.3. The greatest evidence that God was willing to do that requisite work was the Incarnation. God, to be good to us, needed to live a life in the human condition.

Steve,Yes! I think that is what Hebrews is getting at: Jesus' work is an ongoing work, making constant intercession for us. Jesus started a conversation between God and Man that will never end.

That this makes sense to me. There always must be something foreign to make any true relationship go. I'm still learning things about my wife. Each day is one of discovery. That's the joy and fun of it all. And I wonder if something analogous is happening with God, that the journey between God and I is never completed. And who would want it to be?

To all: Thanks for taking the time to read through and comment on some pretty long and less-than-superfical posts!

"What I find most appealing in openness theology is its relational focus."

The first time I read that sentence, I thought it said "appalling", and I agreed. In my opinion, any claims about the potency and personal relationality of God are neutralized by the scope and degree of human suffering. Or, as Connor said more succinctly, if this is a relationship, then God needs counseling.

So I think you have a useful metaphor there, but I also think there are simpler ways of explaining the discrepancies between the NT and OT God.

I just realized that what several of us are saying might be translated as, "once isn't enough". For God to understand Humanity, it's not enough for God to be incarnate once. God would have to be incarnated many, many times. God would need to show up as wealthy and powerful. God would need to show up as a woman. God would need to live long enough to become senile and infirm. Once isn't enough. That's one reason that the panentheistic model holds more water for me.

The assumption here seems to be that an s-fact can only be known by someone who has had a relevantly similar experience, and that God cannot have relevantly similar experiences.

I think both assumptions can be questioned without going for any kind of openness theology. God's knowledge may be akin to experiential knowledge, and it could be that he simultaneously knows the past, present and future from every veridical point of view. Thus, he may knows a situation from the point of view of vision, from the point of view of echolocation, from the point of view of emotional significance, etc. I am not saying this is indeed so, but I don't know of a very good philosophical reason to deny it.

The claim that one can only know what an experience is like if one's had it seems likely to be false. I am going to argue that it's possible to know what a pain is like without ever having had a pain. Suppose Mary never had a pain but Patricia had one. Suppose that right now Patricia isn't having a pain. Does she know what a pain is like? Of course she does! So, one can know what a pain is like without having one occurrently. How does she know it? By memory, of course. Now, the memory of a pain may or may not be painful. In the case of psychological pains, it often is painful, while in the case of non-traumatic physical pains, the memory is often not itself painful. To develop the case further, suppose Patricia's memory of her past pain is not itself painful.

So, Patricia indeed knows a past pain without being in pain. But she had experienced the pain. Now, suppose that we implant Patricia's memory of the painful experience in the mind of Mary. (If memory is housed in the brain, then this ought to be possible. Even some anti-physicalists like St Thomas Aquinas think that memory is to a significant extent a physical phenomenon. And even if memory is house in a supernatural soul, we can imagine the transplantation of a memory.) So now Mary has the "memory" (well, strictly speaking, pseudomemory) on the basis of which Patricia knew what pain is like. Suppose there is no deception: Mary knows the "memory" is a transplant. It seems plausible that under the circumstances, Mary knows what pain is like. She knows it by having the same "memory" as Patricia did. Mary knows that in her case the "memory" is not of an experience she herself had, but that shouldn't affect things.

So the principle that s-facts can only be known by people who have had the relevant experiences is false.

First, it seems that much of your argument is resting on an equivalence between "the memory of the experience" and "the experience itself." I think on both phenomenological and neurological grounds that equivalence doesn't hold. A bit of introspection reveals that the memory of the taste my grandma's apple pie does not, in any way, stand in for the real deal. (The memory makes me seek out the read deal!) I think this simple observation makes much of your argument moot.

Second, the mere fact that you posit a "transplant" makes my point about s-fact blindness. Prior to any transplant the person is s-fact blind. My point is that you NEED the transplant. But why go through the transplant in the first place? If you want to experience pain you can either get the transplant or hit your hand with a hammer. Neurologically and phenomenologically they do the same thing, but prior to that moment you are, and will forever be, s-fact blind.

Third, in your transplant model you would have to show me, in more detail than you have, how a pseudomemory is both known to be "not mine" and yet experienced "as if it were mine" without actually inducing said experience in the person. That whole chain seem dubious to me and I, personally, wouldn't want to rest too much upon it.

Further, you would have to show how the memory isn't simply activating the neuromachinery that creates the subjective experience. That is, the memory makes you, neurologically, undergo (an impoverished version) of the experience. And isn't that my point? To know the experience you must undergo the experience.

Finally, let's back up and reason form Case Zero. Imagine a population that is s-fact blind about "red." Now imagine one person undergoes the experience (Case Zero). To be sure we can posit transplants after Case Zero, but what is the status of the entire population prior to Case Zero? They are, in fact, s-fact blind to red. ("Red" in this scenario has to be a theoretically possible s-fact, like a human developing a mutation that give them the capacity to see microwaves, which should be, presumably, a different "color.")

I see you are a philosopher. Are you a philosopher of mind? Have you read much of the literature on this subject? I don't want to assume too much or too little with you.

HiThanks for good postI used to think deeply about the quality of our inner world , and finally as you agree, found out that I'm living in an isolated world in which just due to public agreement about naming color of red rose , Red , we call it Red all. But we have no idea what kind of sensation , anybody else experiences when exposing to red-end of light spectrum.(may be later, when complete neurological circuits get defined, a very precise evaluation of firing the same circuits could lead neuroscientists to conclude that all people are experiencing the same , when exposing to the Red[or visa verse] ).

But about God, I don't agree, due to my religious books's (Quran's) info:God says in Quran:I'm aware of what are you thinking on your minds all. I conclude 1- The Free Will exist because God says "what you think" / He doesn't say : "what happens on your mind" 2-He, probably , is capable of experiencing our consciousness,from our point of view, himself.